In the autumn of 1941, when the fascists were at the gates of Moscow, ten fighters under the command of Lieutenant set out into the enemy rear to blow up a munitions base…
The novella reflects the sharpest conflicts of the great confrontation of 1941–1945, with a psychologically precise depiction of clashes of character. And most of all—the moral core of each of the characters involved in a dynamic plot, reminiscent of a spring compressed tightly for the time being, of the kind used in an explosive mechanism.